The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi Mitchison

we are not powerless. You cannot be Chief alone. Harn Der, she is your daughter—what do you say?’

      ‘She is fully young yet,’ said Harn Der; ‘she must make her wedding-dress first. Let the betrothal be when the Council wills. In summer we must all go to our lands, she with me to mine; after harvest—may all go well with it!—we will have the marriage.’

      He looked hard at Tarrik, and Tarrik back at him. ‘What does she say?’ asked Tarrik.

      ‘It is not for her to speak. Tomorrow the Council will find you a lucky day for your betrothal.’

      Tarrik walked straight to the inner door and called: ‘Erif Der!’ After a moment she came, her eyes on the ground. She had changed her dress; the new one was made of some fine, Greek stuff, a very delicate, silvery linen web, crossed again and again with dozens of colours, yellows and blues and greens, and sometimes a metal thread, copper or gold, that held the blink of the candles. It stood out lightly all round her; her plaits hung forward from her bent head into the hollow of her breasts; her coat was of white fur, very short. She went and stood between Harn Der and Yellow Bull; just once she looked at Tarrik, a glance so quick that no one but he saw it. ‘Are you going to marry me when I choose?’ he said. ‘Erif Der, answer me!’

      But her voice was little more than a murmur. ‘I will do what my father chooses, Chief,’ she said. And the Council nodded and whispered to one another: she was a good girl, as they would wish their own daughters to be; there was nothing odd about her.

      ‘Very well,’ said Tarrik, ‘I’ll let you win—this time! I thank you for allowing me to be your Chief still!’ And he turned and went out into the sea-damp evening.

      Harn Der wondered why he had said just that last thing; it was queer. … But no one else had noticed particularly; the Chief was always bad to deal with when he was crossed. Some of them stayed on for supper with Harn Der; they spoke of the marriage, hoped that the Chief might grow less wild, saying he was worse than a wild-cat to deal with now and would some day bring harm to Marob. And then they praised Erif Der for looks and modesty, and she waited on them and made little magics over their food and drink, and was amused to see one trying to shake out of his glass a spider that was not there, and another startled at his butter turning pink. When they were all gone, she and Berris went out too, and left her father and eldest brother together. ‘I did that very well,’ said Harn Der. ‘I was not so ready that anyone might think there could be a plan, and not so cautious that they might remember it against me when he is not Chief any longer.’

      ‘But what will happen to him?’ said Yellow Bull. ‘Will he be magicked enough not to care whether he is Chief or not? Otherwise he will be dangerous.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Harn Der, ‘I have been thinking that too. Well, we shall see—alive or dead.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Yellow Bull again. ‘I know you don’t quite believe in what you tell Berris; but still—he did promise to come and see my road.’

       Chapter Three

      YELLOW BULL HAD ridden on ahead to warn his wife they were coming and bid her get her best food ready for them, and now Tarrik and Epigethes were quite alone in the afternoon, with the track stretching across the plain as far as they could see, in front and behind. In the distance, on the right, there was a flock of sheep grazing, but no shepherd in sight. Every now and then a large hawk would come circling near them, and sometimes they roused hares or grass rats from the tussocks beside their path.

      Tarrik was riding a young horse that had never been properly broken; it shied at its own shadow and had already tried to bolt with him twice. But he was such a brilliant rider that it only made the day pass more amusingly, and now the horse was answering better to bridle and knee than it had in the morning. Epigethes was on the whole a bad rider, and out of practice; he was very stiff and sore, and far from Hellas. They did not talk much. Tarrik had started several conversations, but after a short time they always seemed to drop, or else something unpleasant would creep into them, a hint of too absolute power by the Chief, or Epigethes showing rather too much of that fear that was whispering painfully all round his heart, all the time, that had been there ever since the day the Chief of Marob had called him from the street, and afterwards he had tried to find a ship that was sailing … but there were none. He would have gone anywhere, to Olbia, to Tyras, north or south, given up all his plans; he offered fantastic prices; but no one seemed interested in him. And now—now this unknown fear was coming closer, he tried to keep his mouth and eyes still, knowing that this terrible Scythian would see any least movement, knowing exactly—so hard it is being even a bad artist—the slight flicker of pleasure that would go over the Chief’s face, watching his own pain.

      Every mile or so they passed great patches of wild-rose bushes, very sweet, and covered with butterflies; they were going downhill almost imperceptibly. By and bye they began to see the spreading of the marshes in front of them, the deeper green of reeds, the steel blue of still waters curving among them. Soon they were near enough to be tormented by the mud-happy gnats and gadflies, their horses swerved and started and kicked and tried to roll. Epigethes was thrown once, and picked himself up with an aching head, and the feeling that the ground was getting softer and beginning to smell queer and rotten. There were plants with greyish, swollen leaves, and sometimes they saw the tracks of wild boar crossing their own way. They had to go carefully, keeping to the raised path; once they crossed a plank bridge and saw fish moving slowly over the black mud below them. Then the ground lifted a little to an island, and some large elm trees with cattle grazing under them. And over the ridge was Yellow Bull’s house, facing south over the unknown country, tarred wood and reed thatch, with byres at one side, and store-houses at the other.

      The earth in the yard was not yet summer-hard, but at least they could pick their way dry-shod between the worst of the mud; Yellow Bull brought them into his hall and helped them to pull off their riding-boots. They could smell their supper nearly ready and even hear the hissing and bubbling of roast meat over the fire in the other room. In the meantime the women brought them water for hands and feet, and such wine as there was in the house—not good, but at least it drove the fear a little further from Epigethes, and helped him to talk and laugh and look about him.

      Yellow Bull’s wife, Essro, was a small, pale-skinned woman, with eyes that seemed too big for her face; she lived mostly indoors, so as not to have to look at the marshes. She had always been good at domestic magic: her milk stayed sweet in hot weather, her stored apples never rotted, a bushel of flour went a long way with her. But she was easily frightened; she never tried to work magic on people, least of all on her husband, and the farm slaves found her easy to cheat. It was only very timidly that she dared say words over her own hair, even, to stop it falling out in the autumn, when there were mists creeping over the whole of their island, and she longed most for Marob town.

      She waited on them at supper, very nervous of Tarrik; once she dropped a milk-jug and screamed, not very loud, but enough to hide the gasp of sheer terror from Epigethes. Afterwards she brought in torches and candles, and more wine. Yellow Bull drank little, but the others had their cups filled and refilled.

      Tarrik had a strong head, but very much enjoyed getting drunk. He never got to the stage of completely losing control of his body, except at the three great feasts of the year, when, as Chief and Corn King he had led the rest in this, as in everything, and even then it was a drunkenness not even mostly of the wine and corn mead. But an hour or so of fairly steady drinking would just give him the necessary feeling of unreality, of separateness, of being able to stand apart and observe, and be free of mere human emotions.

      And Epigethes found it was doing him all the good in the world; the fear retreated right into the back of his mind, till it was scarcely more than the tiniest black cobweb on the clear mirror of his perceptions. He began to feel again a Hellene among barbarians, amused at their odd habits and manners and clothes. Yellow Bull asked him if he was stiff with riding. He was. He wanted to explain that riding was not truly Hellenic, that it was better to run beautifully and exercise one’s own body rather than a mere brute’s—he sketched a few gestures, of running, disk-throwing, wrestling—a swimmer, even, with one arm raised for a perfect side-stroke … he grew a little mixed in his movements.